Two workers at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo were bitten Friday while trying to weigh a binturong, also called a bearcat, native to tropical forests in Asia.
Zoo officials said a worker was trying to weigh the 12-year-old female named Lola during a routine training session in a nonpublic area of the zoo’s Great Cats exhibit at around 10 a.m. when the animal bit.
Lola did not let go of the worker after the bite, and a colleague came to assist and move the binturong to a separate enclosure. Lola bit that staffer as well.
The two workers, who weren’t identified by zoo officials, suffered non-life-threatening injuries and went to a hospital out of an abundance of caution.
The binturong is a furry mammal roughly the size of a coyote, with a tail about as long as its body. Females like Lola are larger than males, according to the National Zoo website. She arrived at the National Zoo along with 14-year-old male Hank from the Brookfield Zoo in Illinois in 2022.
Binturongs are known as bearcats because of their whiskers and stockiness but are not closely related to bears or cats. They’re most closely related to civets, another carnivorous mammal found in tropical forests across Africa and Asia.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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